Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Success: Evidence from Ecuador

• In Event: Candidates' Personal Characteristics and Their Performance

Abstract

The decision-making process in voting is complex. It is determined by several factors such as personality traits, ideological proximity to parties, stereotypes and prejudice, economic performance assessment, among others (Colantone & Stanig, 2018; Crawford, Jussim, Madon, Cain, & Stevens, 2011; Erisen & Blais, 2016; Tausanovitch & Warshaw, 2018). It becomes even more complex in scenarios where voters are faced with too many options or in compulsory voting systems (Nagler, 2015; Selb & Lachat, 2009). The question that naturally arises is how people deal with this complexity? To answer this question and to tame the intricacies of voting behavior, a rich tradition of research relies on heuristics. It circumvents the complexity of decision making by bypassing a large amount of information while still generating a choice. In this line, the “what is beautiful is good” heuristic proposes that physically attractive persons benefit from their attractiveness in a wide range of circumstances, including politics (Agthe, Spörrle, & Maner, 2010). In other words, attractiveness is an appearance-based cue that affects voter’s decisions in contexts where there is otherwise low information and engaging in substantial decision-making processes is costly. The focus of this study is on physical attractiveness because an individual's outward appearance is one of the most obvious personal characteristics and also one of the most accessible to others in social interaction (Berscheid & Walster, 1974) and because the ballot includes photos which allow this to be directly assessed. Where beauty heuristics are in place, this may be used to forecast candidates' character and personality, leading voters to make poor decisions in many cases.

While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage might vary when taking into consideration a specific feature of the electoral systems such as the number of candidates put forth by parties’ magnitude and choice ‘overload’ under free list.

Photos of nominated candidates for the City Council of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, were compiled from the official databases provided by the Electoral Council of Ecuador. To obtain valid ratings of the candidates’ attractiveness, around 1000 first year undergraduate students were recruited from a large university in the country. Each student was shown one candidate photo at a time and asked to rate the candidate’s attractiveness based only on the picture. The attractiveness score of each candidate is the result of averaging student’s scores.

Through econometric modeling and using information on election outcomes in local elections in Ecuador, the attractiveness score, candidates’ gender and education, and other characteristics, we evaluate the relationship between attractiveness and electoral outcomes. We find that the physical attractiveness effect is larger for female candidates belonging to minor parties. We interpret that this is a result of these candidates being less well known so that, in the absence of candidates’ information, the heuristics of the “what is beautiful is good” can be used to make a decision with a lower effort.

Authors

• Vanessa Carrión-Yaguana, Universidad de las Americas

• Royce A. Carroll, University of Essex